2013-06-20

Historical Geographical Databases: An Introduction to GEORG

Among the current developments in archaeology,
history and geography the Digital evolution is by far the most significant one. The
digitalization of historical information is a recurrent theme in projects at
archives, museums and universities. Geographically bound data makes it possible
to conduct larger studies at a previously quite inaccessible scale, and the
importance of a geographical focus, not the least in the building of easily
searchable databases, is clearly something that have recently been realized by
several institutions. The use and the ongoing development of GIS software have
contributed much to this movement. Alongside with the digital evolution there
have also been a lot of discussion about the public accessibility of digital information. That is, the “free or not free” part of this data. Among the
people working with open source software this is something almost religious,
where all data should be downloadable for free. In other cases, especially
where the data can be used for commercial purposes, the data is often (at least
partly) available to view, but only downloadable for “premium” members (which
means that you have to pay).

Today, I will introduce you to a Swedish
database named GEORG, the elder sister of the database KARL that I have
contributed to this spring. See my earlier posts for more on KARL and the
project YGK.

GEORG is a complex database built mainly for researchers. Here we see some of its basic functions such as "Show map collections", "Search register and export" and "Search by map"﻿

GEORG is the result of a project named
“Nationalutgåva av de äldre geometriska kartorna” (National edition of the elder
geometrical maps). This project had its base at the National Archives in
Stockholm and was led by Clas Tollin, docent at the department of agrarian
history at SLU in Uppsala. The project
lasted between 2001-2010 and the goal was to make the information in the
geometrical maps from 1630-1655 easily accessible to researchers and other
interested individuals. This meant that the maps, previously scanned in quite
poor quality, had to be rescanned in high quality and all the information had
to be geographically registered with the use of GIS. In addition, all the
written text describing the maps were transcribed and digitalized. The maps
themselves follows almost the exact same pattern as the Younger geometrical
maps, which I have described in detail in earlier posts. The result is a
database where all the data is accessible and downloadable. At the moment, the
site is only available in Swedish, though an English translation is planned.

This database was among the first of its kind,
and a landmark in the evolution of geographic historical databases. At the
present there are many projects going on using many of the same principles. For readers fluent
in German there is a highly ambitious project going on in Pomerania, which in
the 17th century was a part of the Swedish Empire. For readers more
comfortable with English than these other languages I can recommend you to look
at the database for the Down Survey of Ireland, which can be compared to
GEORG. This database is also concerned with 17th century maps,
though the material is quite different. Links to these projects can be found
below.

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About me

My name is Oscar Jacobsson and I am a graduate student at the department of Archaeology and Ancient History at Lund University in Sweden.
This blog is dedicated to the discussion of medieval landscapes in many different ways, though my main interest lies in the relationship between natural and human landscapes. Therefore most of the published material will concern this subject.
Feel free to contact me on:
oscarjacobsson@live.com